Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Gold Gloves

I've kept silent about Adam Jones winning the Gold Glove award this season, largely because the various defensive metrics indicate that he had a poor season in the field (I even highlighted it in my look ahead to the offseason). Joe Posnanski found an interesting tidbit, though:

The Doyen of Defense, John Dewan, wrote an interesting thing the other day. Hewas trying to determine if Torii Hunter or Adam Jones deserved their GoldGloves. And while he hit several points, the one that stuck out for me was this:Adam Jones led the league with four home run saving catches.

That explains it perfectly! Of course Adam Jones would score highly on the system used by Rawlings to determine the Gold Gloves: he looks like a great defender. He makes spectacular catches, runs gracefully, and has a great arm. Franklin Gutierrez, who turned in an all-time great defensive season for Seattle, was more deserving of the Gold Glove, but it's difficult to fault the voters when Jones made so many memorable plays. People who watched the Orioles play all season long picked up the same thing as the metrics: Jones, who frequently plays shallow, had difficulty on deep balls. Most evaluators, though, don't have the luxury of watching a full season, and it's these situations where objective metrics need to supplement subjective opinions._________________________